Former friend of Myyon Barnes reflects on time before he was a sportswriter

RICHMOND, Ind. – Every year since the Myyon A. Barnes Athlete of the Year award was founded in 2011, athletes, coaches, sportswriters and others have reached out to share memories of Myyon, a former sports reporter for the Palladium-Item who passed away that March.

Each has their touching stories, which have almost always involved athletics.

But last summer, I received an email that showed a different side of Myyon – a side of Myyon from long before he set foot in Richmond, Ind.

Terry Thompson, who knew Myyon from a year they spent together at Upper Iowa University, found out about Myyon’s death when he accidentally came across a column from pal-item.com.

“Just wanted to reach out and say reading the article for the Myyon Barnes AOY nominations was not the way I wanted to learn about one of my all-time best friends’ late death,” Thompson said in an email to the Palladium in the summer of 2017.

“I haven't thought of Myyon in years as we lost touch due to me being in the military. I actually accidentally seen a post on Facebook and a picture of Myyon and thought to myself, WOW there's Myyon, I haven't thought of him in years until I realized he had passed. My excitement diminished really fast.”

Thompson said he considered Myyon one of his best friends during their time at Upper Iowa University. The two only spent one year together, but Thompson said he had to leave Upper Iowa after his junior year for personal reasons and lost touch with Myyon.

Last summer, he decided to look him up on Facebook, and a Google search quickly brought up a Palladium-Item column about the Myyon A. Barnes Athlete of the Year award.

“If there was a positive in all this is knowing that he made such an impact that an award is named after him and his legacy is living on,” Thompson told the Palladium-Item by phone last week. “I’m absolutely thrilled about that, he definitely is a very infectious guy and to have something honored it says a lot about what he may have done in that area.”

While people around the area know Myyon for his love of sports, it was music that brought Thompson and Myyon together.

“We were very close,” Thompson said. “We played guitar together, I don’t know if you know anything about his music. It’s not typical, he plays death metal on the guitar – I’m not kidding – this guy plays death.

“He was a super-fast lead guitar player, I was a rhythm player, so he would play guitar, I played rhythm.”

Thompson said he pitched for the Upper Iowa baseball team, where Myyon played basketball.

The two stayed on the same floor, and became close.

One of Thompson’s favorite memories was when they went to a neighboring college to party and woke up late the next day.

“I remember Myyon waking up saying I got to go to practice, we have to leave now,” Thompson said. “We piled up into my car, he gets to basketball practice. It was just one of those, I just know I had to get him back to basketball practice.”

Barnes graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a degree in journalism before joining the Palladium-Item in 2004. During that time, he built many relationships with local high school athletes and coaches.

He passed away in 2011, when I was an intern at the Palladium, and the Myyon A. Barnes Athlete of the Year series debuted that summer.

I was an intern during the 2010-11 school year, my senior year at Earlham College, and though I knew Myyon for only a few months, I could tell how passionate he was. Some people were interviewed just a few times by Myyon and still share their memories.

And Thompson knew Myyon for a year at Upper Iowa. The two saw each other again a few years later, but the short period of time obviously was enough for Thompson to grow to admire Myyon.

That’s what the Myyon A. Barnes Athlete of the Year Award is all about: When people a few years down the line ask who was Myyon Barnes, they’ll learn just how important he was to the area, and to the people he met.

The 2018 version of the Myyon A. Barnes Athlete of the Year award kicks off this week, with a finalist every day starting Tuesday, and the winner will be revealed Sunday.

“The one thing that I can say about him is he was infectious, he had a smile that could pull you in and make you his best friend forever,” Thompson said.

“He was very popular, he had a lot of friends – he just drew you in. He had that smile that would just say get over here. That’s what I really remember about him, that’s what drew me to him."

Jesus Jimenez is a sports reporter for the Palladium-Item. Contact him at (765) 973-4465, jjimenez@pal-item.com, or http://Twitter.com/JesusFJimenezPI